National Geographic: How Many Animals are Affected by Australia’s Disaster?
By Rachael Bale, National Geographic Newsletter, January 9, 2020
500 million animals?
If you’ve been keeping up with the news of the Australia fires, you may have seen this statistic going around.
It comes from University of Sydney professor Chris Dickman, and he explained that this number — 480 million, to be exact — is an estimate of wild animals affected by the fires.
Many have died directly from the flames, smoke, or heat, and many more died or will die as a result of losing their homes and sources of food.
Others, like flying foxes (pictured above), are dying en masse from Australia’s record heat.
Dickman’s big number is based on 2007 research he did for WWF on the density of mammals in the state of New South Wales.
He points out his estimate is conservative: It only counts mammals (minus bats), birds, and reptiles.
It only applies to New South Wales. And it only assumes three million hectares of land burned, which is now outdated.
In fact, the real animal death toll is likely much higher.
But: “We won’t know anything for sure until experts can begin to assess the damage once the fire season is over—and there’s still at least a month to go,” says Nat Geo wildlife reporter Natasha Daly, who has written about the heat-stricken bats and how koalas have been affected by the fires.